Developing and maintaining a loyal customer base is a critical component of operating a successful casino enterprise. To develop a loyal customer base, casino enterprises offer customers the chance to participate in a loyalty program that allows their activities to be tracked. These programs are often referred to internally within the casino enterprise as player tracking systems. For a customer to participate in a loyalty program, the casino enterprise creates an account for the customer and requires the customer to provide identification information, such as their name and address. The identification information is stored to the account. An instrument, such as a magnetic striped card, is provided to the customer. The instrument can include an account number associated with the loyalty program account created for the customer. The customer may also be provided with a username and password, although generally all that is needed by the customer is the magnetic-striped card and inserting or swiping it at a card bezel at a gaming device.
The instrument is utilized during various activities within the casino enterprise so that a record of the customer's activities are generated and stored to an account associated with the instrument. As an example, a customer can insert a magnetic-striped player tracking card into a card reader associated with a slot machine to have a record of their gaming activity on the slot machine stored to the account associated with the player tracking card.
As noted, physical magnetic-striped cards are used for identifying and tracking a patron's play while at the casino. This card has a unique account number that is tied to the patron's player tracking account on the back-end of casino's gaming operations. Through the use of these cards, the casino is able to track a patron's game play habits and tendencies and offer rewards for play and loyalty.
The physical cards are issued to patrons at each casino in which they chose to participate in the loyalty program. Many times this results in a patron having numerous cards to keep track of and to carry with them if going to different casinos. If a player is at a casino and she does not have the specific card for that property, then she will not be able to have her play accounted for without applying for a replacement card. That process can take time depending on how busy the casino is. In addition, a common problem with physical cards is that they get left, either intentionally or unintentionally, in the gaming machine when a patron is done playing. This usually results in the card being abandoned by the player tracking system after some amount of time which results in the patron having to visit the player club booth to be re-issued a new card the next time she plays at that property. In other scenarios, patrons will intentionally leave their cards in the gaming machine hoping that an unsuspecting player will play the machine and contribute their play to the “abandoned” card. This results in the owner of the card receiving points and benefits for play they did not pay for. Another disadvantage of physical cards is the cost of those cards for new customers and the continuing cost of replacement cards due to damage, loss and abandonment.